-->*OFFICIAL: MSI GT627 Owner's Lounge*<--

I have also read in a few places that the 1gb of ram is a marketing ploy and that the 9800 GS can only use up to 512mb of vram due to it's 256mb interface. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

 

ty RayanMX. there wont be any issues leaving the sticker on top then yeah? cuz i was worried for the laptop heat the sticker might melt and cause other issues. i'm getting mine next week and i cant wait. just wanted to be prepared to fix any small issues like the kb which might degrade this otherwise awesome laptop!

 

I don't believe there is a 512MB ram hard limit given a 256bit bus. However, the primary question is what will the performance be like for a slower video card like the 9800m GS when it has filled the 1 gigabyte frame buffer. Generally, if the 9800m GS has to address this much memory each frame your performance isn't going to be great. You most likely will be lowering settings.
Is it a marketing ploy? Maybe. It surely won't help in 99.8% of cases.
If you plan on gaming on a 1920x1200 external display and running 8x anti-aliasing then having more than 512MB of memory could help, but will this laptop handle that anyway? No.

 

It might be a slower card in 9800m series line-up but from what I have seen it's no slowpoke. It's one of the only mobile cards out right now that can actually run gta4 and many of the current games at high detail.

 

Also, has anyone actually measured the gt627? Is it really 1.2" thick from the bottom of the rubber feet to the top of lid? It's too hard to judge by just looking at pictures. I should be getting mine in a week...birthday present

 

To answer the VRAM question, in a sense it is a marketing ploy because the extra amount doesn't dictate performance. You can have a 256mb VRAM GPU be loads better than one with 1Gb of VRAM. Even if I stuck 4Gb of VRAM on a GMA950, it'd still suck because it's other hardware sucks >.>

Companies advertise VRAM as being the main factor which influences performance, but other things are just as important(ex: shaders, core clocks etc.). If you don't believe me, just look at a desktop GPU box. VRAM is usually pretty obvious on the top of the box while the other stuff I've mentioned is usually on the back or the side.

Mind you, the GPU can theoretically use all of its VRAM. There isn't any real limitation in that department. It's just that practically speaking(i.e. through user tests) it barely ever does(as in 99% of the time it doesn't). VRAM mostly comes into play for games at high resolutions or games which have very very high amounts of textures to render. If either of these are to be applied, chances are that other parts of the GPU will limit performance before VRAM does.

Anyways...

At first I thought 1.2" was pretty thick, but after measuring my past notebooks(I've had 2 HP dv2000 Pavillion series in my household), I've noticed that it isn't so thick(it's actually the thickness of the thickest part of the HP).

My main gripe is the weight really. The GT627(or GX620) is my top pick for a laptop currently, but if I have to drag it to school AS WELL as 1-2 textbooks(and Biology books weigh a TON lol ) and some other stuff, a 6lbs notebook might not cut it >.< The problem is I don't have any tools to properly measure the weight of the notebooks I currently have at home to compare.

 

thanks for that info. very helpful. Considering it has the 1GB, would that make the rig more capable of running the video card as a 9800m GTS if you flash the bios. This thread below has a good how-to for flashing to run as a GTS with an ASUS, which I assume could be applied to the GT627 as well?

 

Go old school with a scale and some known weights of food....like a pound of bacon

edit: I want to see pictures of this.

 

hey guys/gals who own this rig. is it true that your only allowed to put 50GB or your hard disk into C: and the rest has to be partitioned into another drive?

 

Yes, but you can change the partition sizes.

 

Wait, what? Can you explain more about this?

 

It comes with two partitions. One is the C: drive with 50gb total and obviously has the Vista installed on it. The remaining 300gb or so is on D: drive.

Not sure of the purpose of this but it's not a big deal. Just need to change installation paths to D: all the time.. which I welcome because it forces me to keep things more organized.

 

oh so no way to up it to more than 50? that might suck a bit.

 

Umm... It can be easily changed through disk management or other software. Personally I like this setup as I can reformat C drive for OS installs without backing up or losing data.

 

Spike, there is a tutorial here if you need it: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial133.html

 

hey thanks markrthompson and zaedion! much appreciated. i guess ill figure things out when i get vista. im still on xp and this laptop will bring me from the stone age to the 21st C. cuz im on a dell D600 at the moment. so thanks for helping me figure stuff out. i feel so :S and retarded. sorry if i asked ignorant questions.

on a brighter note im getting mine in less than a week! it sucks to know its coming and you cant do anything to speed it up.

 

There's simply not enough heat on that part of the notebook to melt it... Really.

This laptop it's very powerful and yet manages to keep relatively cool!

 

I was under that impression that VRam was actually a marketing ploy...

However, comparing this laptop with it's closest rival (the Asus G50VT) which has the same card but with 512 MB VRam it really makes a difference (well, not that much but a difference nonetheless). At least when it comes to GTAIV.

Which by the way has a slider on the Graphics Settings that clearly shows what 1 GB VRam can do in detail vs 512 Mb or worse 256 Mb can. See image below.



Notice how the VRam requirements increase when View Distance is increased.

Oh and here's an Everest Performance Report that I just made on my GT627-218US. It really blew my socks off!!!

Cheers!
RayanMX

 

@RayanMX

Thanks a lot bro!
This seems like the best 15" gaming laptop to me...

But I can buy a laptop only in late May and by then, newer models might have come out....
If I could, I would buy this right now.

EDIT : WOW! That Everest Performance Report is awesome!

 

Ordered mine an hour ago through amazon.com, oh yeah!

 

Huh, they got it in stock pretty quickily. They were out for few days.

 

Yeah, I did the two day shipping so it'll be at my house Friday, I probably won't be there till Sunday though to open it up. Any vids or pictures ppl still hoping to see?

 

@Mr.Wolfram
Havent seen a video of the thing.
It would be great if you could fulfill that desire!
Thanks.

 

I'll make a video of it tonight, what do you want to see? Anything particular?

 

FYI, new bios is out. 1.0S

"Fix issue about system can not use ghost from server when use PXE lan boot."

Bios here

 

A general overview of the laptop would be really nice and the keyboard flex issue, i.e., if you haven't resolved it already...
Thanks a lot bro!

 

Video of fixing flex problem would be nice
Thanks to the ppl who wrote instructions and the guy who posted photoes, but video would be even better.

Asus 51 won't be released in USA at least for quite some time. Amazon jst send me email, they are gonna refund me for gt627 (cdrom, hard drive problems) and I guess I'll buy MSI again. There's nothing like this on the market at this price, and not gonna be in the next 3-4 months.

So, I'll really appreciate the video

And, I guess it would be nice to summarize all posts and manual for keyboard flex in one new topic for new people. You can't expect them to find anything on these 43 pages.

 

I did that, using Vista's extend option under diskmgmt, and the MSI Recovery Disc no longer works right. It goes into a permanent reboot mode that doesn't ever stop unless you boot in safe mode and run msconfig to clean up the install. A simple fix, but I had to spend hours figuring out what went wrong.

I don't know if that happens to everyone or my recovery disck was messed up. But I got no errors when I made those discs, and making them was the very first thing I did when I turned this thing on.

But if anyone runs into this problem, boot in safe mode, run msconfig, go to the bottom, and uncheck "reboot".

 

What video drivers are you currently using?

Thanks!
RayanMX

 

Speaking of recovery discs, for those who don't know yet:

The computer comes with two blank DVD's to create your own recovery discs when you first turn on the computer. First thing it does is install the burning software to do this.

Well, after it asked me to put in Disc 1, I did so, but it does not start burning automatically. I had to alt-tab to the burning software that auto-played in the background and hit GO.

This was a little confusing but I had to do it for both discs. Thought I'd mention it in case it happens to anyone else. If you don't alt-tab and hit okay it'll just infinitely loop a progress bar and when it reaches 100% it starts over.

 

Happen to know if it verified the disk burns after completing them?

 

It did not. And I didn't bother checking actually.

 

I am a potential owner of this lovely laptop with red edges

Anyway, I have a question:

Does the laptop run hot under load? My first Compaq Laptop that had a desktop CPU ran very very hot. If this laptop runs out while gaming, I plan to buy a cooling fan thingy. If not, then I won't.

Thanks

 

msi heat managemnet is very good for these laptop mine gt725 does nt get hot at all and i m sure gt627 would nt have any heat problem either but its always nice to have a cooler

 

It's not too hot at all.. i don't have anything to compare it too.

 

@firstwave,

I'm still amazed on how good this laptop handles heat.

I've played for hours on my lap and even though it gets warm, it's not uncomfortable at all. And that's while playing GTAIV, Crysis and FarCry2!

My previous laptop (an Asus G1S) was terrible in comparison.

I no longer use the chill pad I purchased a few months ago. I'm saving it for the summer

Regards,
RayanMX

 

It's nice to know that you're back KonstantinDK!

I'm sure your new GT627 will be ok!

Oh, and I'm uploading a Google Video with the Keyboard Flex Fix.

I will create a new post for that as you requested.

Just note that English is not my primary language, so excuse any language mistakes on the video ok?

Cheers!
RayanMX

 

@konstantin
Received my GT725 @ 6:50p EST tonight. You were right. Looks MUCH larger in person than the raw dimensional specs would seems to have indicated depth and widthwise. Width looks to be 2" larger than the GT627 as per Mk I eyeball. Not at all sure about depth but I'm sure its bigger than the 1651/GX620/GT627 chassis.

Not looking like it'll fit my nice spire sleeve (and hence bag) though, which sucks. Got the packin bag, but its not nearly as nice as my Spire and seemingly less padded, but it was "free".

 

--SpikE--
well I think it is faster but testing Windows 7 Beta X64 I think both are about the same and those temps are Idle not load sorry.
Load temps for me with crysis running for an hour where about 65C GPU and 56C CPU thats with the turbo button on
pretty good.

 

For those interested and as requested by KonstantinDK, I posted a video I did on how to fix the keyboard flex on the GT627 HERE.

Cheers!
RayanMX

 

I didn't have that problem with mine, but of the 2 discs they sent me 1 was defective. So I spent a good 5 minutes trying to figure out why the drive wouldn't recognize the blank DVD. No big deal, since I have spools of DVDs sitting around.

 

For those of you that have vista x64 installed or maybe even windows 7, have you run into any hardware compatibility issues? I know the gt620 has some compatibility issues with the dolby sound card.

Also, since I don't know if any of my friends have a vista x64 disk, will MSI send me one if I request it?

 

I'm running Windows 7 64 on it and haven't run into any problems. The only hardware that wasn't recognized right off the bat was the IR port. And the drivers from the MSI site worked fine for that.

So far I've had 0 hardware problems with Win7 builds 7022 and 7048. The Win 7 install even brought up a listing of the local wireless networks so I could set them up before booting windows for the first time. Sound works fine even the included drivers seemed ok, but I installed the MSI supplied one on top of it.

The video was a standard driver that didn't include 3d support, but the ones from nVidia installed with no issues.

 

You are awesome, thank you!

 

RayanMX,

Can you please tell me the performance of this laptop in FSX without DX10 preview?
Thanks!

 

Can you please do some videos of FSX?

Thanks!

 

I get about 29-30 FPS with the following setup flying at Friday Harbor with a Boeing F/A-18:

Target Framerate: 30
Screen Resolution: 1680x1050
Filtering: Bilinear
Antialias: ON
Lens Flare ON
Advanced Animations: ON
Global Texture Resolution: Very High (Maxed)
Aircraft Settings: Ultra High
Scenery Settings: Ultra High
Weather Settings: Ultra High
Traffic Settings: Ultra High

Those are very smooth 29-30 FPS, no choppiness.

Also take note that I'm using DOX 182.05 Optimized Performance Video Drivers and Turbo mode at 20%.

Not bad if you ask me!

Cheers!
RayanMX

P.S.- I'll try to post a video later in the weekend.

 

I've had the GT627-218US for a couple of days now and I think it's worthwhile to post my thoughts on the laptop as a whole.

My overall impression of this laptop is very positive. Considering the relatively low price point, I think the feature set and performance are really quite good. I definitely have some quibbles over some of the choices MSI made.

The most major issue being the keyboard. I have to think that the addition of a few cheap spacers would have made this a non-issue. While I was able to fix the issue in 15 minutes with some double sided tape, I really shouldn't have to. Even for a "budget" gaming laptop, this was a pretty big flaw.

Aside from that there are minor issues. The inclusion of a 32 bit OS instead of 64 is definitely a head scratcher. I would have assumed that it was a driver problem, but MSI has 64 bit versions of all their drivers on the web site. So I have no idea what that was about.

I also wish they had rethought where the exhaust port is. As it stands it's pretty much right where my hand would be when using a mouse. If the whole case was mirrored I think I would like it better.

As others have said, I would have preferred a more muted color scheme. I don't hate the red or anything, but I can't help but think it would have looked sharper and less "hey look at me!" in silver, or maybe dark blue.

But aside from those relatively minor problems, this is a very solid laptop. It feels very well put together and sturdy (aside from the keyboard flex). Performance wise I've been quite happy, although I'm mainly just playing WoW on this thing, so I'm not really stretching it too far.

While there are certainly "better" laptops out there, I think this one hits a nice combination of features vs price.

Just my $0.02....

 

@ CthulhuDragon

Sorry to keep asking, but have you tried the webcam on windows 7? I am keeping my old partition of vista 32 on the 50gib section but I'm going to format the larger section with windows 7 x64.

 

Thanks!
Does it come with integrated microphone?